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Tensions between secular and ultra-orthodox Jews play out in an upper middle class neighborhood of Tel Aviv, as reporter Daniel Estrin reports.

• This story comes to us via ‘Vox Tablet,’ a weekly Jewish news and culture podcast produced by Tablet magazine

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MARCO WERMAN:  Our next story opens outside another school in another part of the world.  We’re going to Tel Aviv to a section of the Israeli city known Ramat Aviv.  It’s one of Tel Aviv’s swankiest neighborhoods.  But a culture war is brewing there.  It pits an ultra Orthodox Jewish sect known and Chabad against the mostly secular residents of the community.  Chabad rabbis are known for their outreach efforts, but what some call outreach, others call interference in their way of life.  We get the story from Daniel Estrin.

DANIEL ESTRIN:  its a few minutes before school lets out on a Friday afternoon.  Five parents circle up in the large leafy park in front of the high school and strategize.  Just as they are about to check the perimeter of the school, the man they have been waiting for arrives.  A young guy with a modest brown beard, wearing the signature ultra Orthodox Jewish garb, black cap and black coat, and clutching a blue velvet bag of tefillin, the boxes and straps Jewish men wear for prayer.  He sits down on a park bench and when a group of teenage boys passes by he shouts.  The minute he offers the boys to put on tefillin, the father in sweatpants shouts it’s illegal for him to talk to you and this is only the beginning.

MALE VOICE 1:  It’s like a sect, like the moonies or the scientologists.  They’re approaching children all the time.  It’s disgusting.

ESTRIN: These concerned parents are residents of Ramat Aviv, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv.  It’s an upper middle class neighborhood founded in the fifties by actors and artists.  Today there are even wealthier in Israel, but Ramat Aviv has remained a symbol.

DAVID:  Because it is the fortress of secular Israel.  So for them it’s an attractive target.

ESTRIN: David, who didn’t want to say his last name, has lived here for 40 years.

DAVID:  And it bugs me that these parasites come here and proselytize our children.

ESTRIN: Things weren’t always this tense in Ramat Aviv.  Rabbi Yossi Ginsburg set up a Chabad House here 14 years ago.  But over the past few years the ultra Orthodox presence in the neighborhood has expanded exponentially.  A vintage movie theater was transformed into a kollel, a religious learning institution.  A labor union meeting house was turned into an ultra Orthodox kindergarten.  And more and more ultra Orthodox Jews have moved to Ramat Aviv.  This scares David Shulman.  Do you think their goal is to take over the neighborhood?

DAVID SHULMAN:  I can tell you without a shred of a doubt that that’s what their goal is.  They were not approaching adults.  The kids are our responsibility, leave our kids alone.  Okay?

ESTRIN: Shulman is a 43-year-old economist who has lived in Ramat Aviv since the age of four.  In September helped found the Ramat Aviv resident’s association to unify the neighborhood against Chabad’s activities.  He fears that what will happen in Ramat Aviv is what has happened in other non-religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem.  The ultra Orthodox, or Haredi, population booms, their neighborhoods become overcrowded, they move into neighboring secular neighborhoods, secular people start to feel uncomfortable and they leave.  T

RABBI SCHWARTZ:  Those people who came because they were interested in their own things.  It’s not because we did things to take them.

ESTRIN: - – Schwartz is one of the Yeshiva’s head rabbis.

SCHWARTZ:  Our intentions are clearly to help the population here.

ESTRIN: Rabbi Schwartz says Chabad folks in Ramat Aviv don’t spit at immodestly dressed women and yell in front of restaurants that remain open on Shabbat as some Jews do in the ultra Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Sha’arim in Jerusalem.  But he says some secular Ramat Avivis can’t tell the difference and so they demonize Chabad.

SCHWARTZ:  I remember the first time I was going on the street and I heard someone shouting from the window, go from here.  So the first time I heard this here from a Jew I can’t describe you the deep terrible shock.

ESTRIN: And Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, known as Israel’s most radical journalist and who usually aligns himself with the liberal politics of Ramat Avivis wrote a recent column that surprised readers.

GIDEON LEVY:  I think that racism is racism is racism.  If it’s directed towards Palestinians, if it’s directed towards black people and if it’s directed toward the haredi, the ultra Orthodox society or community.

ESTRIN: Chabad is flourishing in Ramat Aviv and so is the resident association.  In October the association organized the first large scale community wide Sukkot celebration to take place in Ramat Aviv.  And then for Hanukkah the association sponsored a public candle lighting ceremony, which ironically, might make a Chabad rabbi smile.  No matter which side of the battlefield you look at, there’s more Jewish celebration on the streets of Ramat Aviv than ever before.  For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Ramat Aviv.

WERMAN: This story comes to us via Vox Tablet, a weekly Jewish news and culture podcast produced by Tablet magazine.

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